Anti-Militarism: News & Updates

As Fiscal Year 2022 is almost over, we are hearing numbers of 750 or more migrant deaths over the past twelve months. While, tragically, it does still happen that migrants die while being chased by Border Patrol agents or shot when attempting to cross the border, the majority of these deaths are a result of the so-called “prevention through deterrence” strategy that forces people to take on more dangerous routes when traveling up to the southern U.S. border to seek safety. And if they do make it through to the U.S., they are often expelled immediately or put into deportation proceedings, waiting for their hearing in Mexican emergency shelters or U.S. detention centers. Read IRTF's monthly overview of recent updates on U.S. immigration and what has been happening at the border!

https://www.irtfcleveland.org/blog/migrant-justice-newsletter-sep-2022

 The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting that Ultimate Jet Charters, a local company, played an instrumental role in a depraved political stunt by Florida Gov. DeSantis. The charter airline flew dozens of people seeking asylum to Martha's Vineyard and left them there, stranded. In this video, lawyer Rachel Self talks about the ways people were tricked by Gov. DeSantis, DHS, and now an Ohio company. Ultimate Jet Charters facilitated a depraved political stunt for a Republican governor, which amounts to large-scale human trafficking. The passengers were people seeking asylum in the U.S. because they face extortion, gang violence, kidnapping, and murder in their native countries. They were tricked into getting on the plane, told lies, and had no idea what was happening.

An unexpected turn hits the eight-year ongoing case of 43 missing students in Mexico.

The prosecutor in charge of the most notorious human rights case involving police, military officials, politicians and drug gangs, Omar Gómez Trejo, has quit. This follows disagreements with the Office of the Attorney General. 

Gómez Trejo spent more than three years investigating the case, winning judicial approval for 83 arrest warrants in the last month alone. During his investigation he was met with massive pushback by the attorney general's office, which pressured a judge to vacate 21 of the arrest warrants, 16 of which being military officials.

This resignation leads to people questioning the state's willingness to take on politicians, the police, and the military. 

Officially the government blames corrupt local police and politicians, as well as drug gangs, for the forced disappearance of the students, though independent experts have stated that federal and state army officials had knowledge of the kidnappings and did not intervene. Furthermore, a report accuses the police and army of covering the case up. 

So far the remains of only three of the 43 students have been found. 

This development comes in a charged time. Shortly earlier, Mexico's president Andrés Manuel López Obrador moved the formerly civilian controlled national guard to the army's command and has pushed the congress to extend the military mandate to law enforcement until 2028.

Critics fear that the reliance on the military for everything from arresting drug traffickers to building airports and operating seaports may lead Mexico’s democracy to slip away from civilian control.     

For over six months now the country of El Salvador has been in a State of Exception (similar to a declared State of Emergency).

This is a temporary suspension of some constitutional rights that enables the government to repeal basic human rights as well as democratic structures. 

The current government under president Nayib Bukele officially initiated the State of Exception as a means to counter gang violence, but uses it to rule the country with an iron fist.

In this time span corruption and human rights violations have risen to new highs.

One of the rights that has been suspended is the 2011 enacted "Law on Access to Public Information" (LAIP), guaranteeing the right to seek and receive information held by the state. With this law expelled, the government has eliminated any public control over the the use of funds and state contracts, opening the door for corruption. According to the Office of the General Attorney, up to 66% of state purchases showed signs of irregularities in their procedures. 

Besides the staggering rise of corruption, the State of Exception drags a trail of state violence and oppression. Under the pretext of the struggle against gang violence, massive power abuse by police and armed forces has been reported. Up until September the state has detained over 52,549 people without warrants and has sent 45,260  individuals to prison during mass hearings. 

The policies have led to overcrowded prisons, causing a lack of basic human needs and at least 73 deaths due to torture, lack of medical assistance, hunger and other violence. The number of unreported cases is estimated to far surpass the official numbers. 

After the transportation of asylum seekers to Martha's Vineyard, initiated by Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, the contracted aviation company Vertol System Inc. caught public attention. 

The Oregon-based company has received more then $1 million from the state of Florida to transport immigrants to different locations in the United States. 

Investigations now show, that the company has donated at least $12,000 to the Floridian political campaigns of DeSantis' allies, including 2,500 to a Super Pac supporting  Matt Gaetz, a former law representative of Vertol System Inc. 

Read more about DeSantis' transportation of Venezuelan asylum seekers in this month's IRTF Migrant Justice newsletter. https://www.irtfcleveland.org/blog

As the Colombian government transitions from the right wing conservative Iván Duque to the leftist Gustavo Petro, the violence and crime holds on. 

WOLA (Washington Office on Latin America), has received reports of a multitude of cases of human rights violations including shootings, assassinations displacements and death threats. On the 12th of September an armed conflict broke out in the Afro-Colombian community in the town of San Miguel, displacing 100s of families, causing power outages and lockdowns. The  Afro-Colombian General Community Council of San Juan (Consejo Comunitario General de San Juan, ACADESAN) calls on the State to defend the human rights of the community and urges the armed groups to respect human rights and laws.

Only 2 days earlier, a hitman killed the secretary of administrative affairs of the Oil Workers Union (Unión Sindical Obrera, USO) Sibares Lamprea Vargas in a drive by shooting.  The Human Rights Ombudsman (Defensoría del Pueblo) issued an Early Warning Alert, indicating that trade unionists belonging to the USO face danger due to their activities. USO members are frequent targets of death threats intimidation and sabotage in their workplace. 

On September 9th, in Surcre, the female social leader Eva Amaya Vidal was killed in her home. Vidal participated in Sucre government innovation programms and was an example of leadership for other women. An early alert was issued stating that female social leaders are often targets based on their gender. 

The The Afro-Colombian Peace Council (Consejo Nacional de Paz de Afro-Colombianos, CONPA) reports that between July 27 and August 7,  957 male and female leaders as well as human rights activists were assasinatied, 261 signers of the peace accords were killed, and 1,192 people were killed in 313 massacres. Furthermore, the CONPA reports 2,366 death threats, 555 kidnappings and 178 early warnings. CONPA urges the government to declare a state of humanitarian emergency and to seek politically negotiated solutions to the conflicts. 

A full list of the WOLA reports can be found in the article below.   

Since the Biden administration restarted the Central American Minors Refugee and Parole Program (CAM program), initionaly initiated by the Obama administration and later withdrawn by Trump, not much has happened. 

Underfunding and personal shortage at the nine national resettlement agencies led to the inability to handle the mass of applications. 

Due to this bottleneck only a few hundred cases filed before the Trump administration ended the program have been completed since March 2021.

For many children this slow processing of applications means waiting times of over a year and no information on how long it will take until they are reunited with their familes.

Organizations are now calling for the support of consuls to help the children with their application interviews and pass case information on to the waiting parents or guardians.  

On September 17, the New York Times published an article  by Anatoly Kurmanaev and Jody García including misinformation and false claims about the US government's efforts to support democracy in Central America. 

The article claims that the Biden administration is working to end corruption and impunity in Guatemala, while being inactive as the military backed government  “methodically dismantled the last vestiges of independent institutions." The US is supporting this illegitimate government, referring to the Guatemalan ruling class as "democratic allies." 

Besides this, Biden lied about stopping the sanctions against Nicaragua, which the U.S. and many "western" countries have been using since the 1980's to squeeze its economy and cause political change. 

The article also states that the U.S. aided the return to democracy in Honduras. In fact, the U.S. has always held mutually beneficial relations to the Honduran government which came to power by an U.S. backed coup.     

On behalf of IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) members, we wrote six letters this month to heads of state and other high-level officials in Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico, urging their swift action in response to human rights abuses occurring in their countries.  We join with civil society groups in Latin America to: (1) protect people living under threat, (2) demand investigations into human rights crimes, (3) bring human rights criminals to justice.

IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) volunteers write six letters in response to urgent human rights cases each month. We send copies of these letters to US ambassadors, embassy human rights officers, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, regional representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and desk officers at the US State Department. To read the letters, see https://www.irtfcleveland.org/content/rrn , or ask us to mail you hard copies.